This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, good evening. Good evening. Good evening. So, although today... I have been talking about Suzuki Roshi's teaching. And frankly, I'm a little tired of it. But it's great and I enjoy it very much. And I enjoy commenting on Suzuki Roshi's teaching. I practiced with him for seven years and got a pretty good dose, a pretty good feeling for his teaching.

[01:08]

And so I might continue doing that tonight. Before I do, I would like to know if anybody has a question about practice. Because I like to take questions. I could present something, and I will, but there are a lot of people in this room. Somebody must have a question. There's their hand. Your toupee? What is that? Oh, okay. Oh, you're asked to remove your hat. Yes, out of respect for the space.

[02:17]

Yeah, a sign of respect. Sure. Because you'll be the only person wearing a hat. Yeah, it's not that we don't like you. We may not like you. Is there a background to where that tradition came from? Oh, well, the tradition came from monks who originally developed this practice, and they shaved their hair off. So the... And I can't tell you why. All I know is that's the custom. It's not a rule. It's not a law. It's a custom. So we follow certain customs. And when we follow certain customs, it gives us the feeling that we're doing the same thing together.

[03:22]

So in our practice... We follow a lot of customs and some rules, but I remember, this is the first time you've been here, so you're not so familiar, but in our monastery in San Francisco, we have an altar like this and a statue of the teacher. It doesn't look like him, but... It's a nice statue, and it represents our original teacher. And when people go past that little room where his statue is, they bow and then go on out of respect. And every once in a while, somebody would say, do I have to do that? And I would say, no, you don't have to do that. It's not a rule or a law.

[04:25]

But it's out of respect for the teacher. It's a custom. So there are rules and there are customs. Sometimes customs get old and we have to change them or nobody respects them anymore. But we do respect that. We have a lot of respect for our founding teacher. And for all the cooperating teachers, when I first started to practice in 1964, Katagiri, who was then sensei, was there helping Suzuki Roshi. And then Chino sensei came, and Yoshimura sensei came, and we had a lot of really wonderful Japanese teachers. Suzuki Roshi came in 1959. And by the time I came there, 1964, the practice was just starting.

[05:34]

And it was very exciting because nobody had ever done this practice before with these teachers. And each one was different. Each one of these teachers followed the Dharma and taught us what they needed. what they knew in the way that they had learned it, in the way that they had expressed it. So it was a very rich time for us. And I think that's one of the aspects that really made the foundation of Zen Center so strong. So it made us students just want to practice with these wonderful people. And they were from a foreign country.

[06:34]

And they gave us so much without asking much in return. But because they were so generous, we gave back in kind by allowing them to teach us. and following their example. To me it was just a wonderful thing to allow that to happen. We also learned that those teachers had practiced in the monastic situations in Japan And they had great respect for their teachers. And they always chanted the names of their teachers every day, going all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha.

[07:39]

That seemed to me a little excessive. But that's just my opinion. It wasn't excessive at all. It was just the opinion I had. And this is what keeps Zen alive. We don't have a sutra or some special teaching that we follow. The thing that's peculiar, in the sense of peculiar too, not strange, is that the tradition is handed, you know, as we say, who knows, but the tradition is supposed to have been handed from Shakyamuni Buddha to each of the next generation of teachers.

[08:42]

And so we name certain teachers in that lineage, in our lineage, as the successor to so-and-so and so-and-so. It's... Part of it is made up, of course, but there's some reality to it, some truth to it. We don't know very much about the Indian ancestors, and we know more about the Chinese ancestors, because the Chinese kept really good records, whereas the Indians didn't keep very good records at all. But because So we say that the lineage is handed down from one teacher to another in succession. We say warm hand to warm hand. Today we were talking about warm-hearted practice. Warm-hearted practice is something that Suzuki Roshi was talking about.

[09:45]

You know, we tend to think of sin as being kind of strengthened and the teachers shouting and hitting and all these demonstrations of what some people would call violence. And then we have some stereotypical idea of what a teacher is. It's very stern, strong. But actually, there is a stereotype. There is no special way that a teacher acts. Every teacher is different. Every teacher looks different. All those fierce-looking portraits of Rinzai and the Rinzai tradition teachers who look so fierce, that's made up by an artist. That's not a portrait.

[10:49]

It is a portrait. from somebody's imagination of how that teacher should look. But we buy into the pictures. Suzuki Roshi was very strong, but he was very gentle and very soft and strict. He had so many different characteristics, and he didn't stick to any one of them. And all of our teachers who helped him in the beginning, all had different personalities. And a teacher will have characteristics which we associate with them. So some of the characteristics that I associate with Suzuki Roshi was great strength, great determination, great love, great determination,

[11:51]

and great settledness and sincerity and on and on and on. I can't name all those characteristics, but you get the picture. But he was both strong and what made him strong was his weakness. But it was not weakness, his flexibility. People often mistake flexibility for weakness. But he would say, a weak person's weakness can be their strength, and a strong person's strength can be their weakness. He knew us very well. When Suzuki Roshi came to San Francisco, he could see who we were better than we could see ourselves.

[12:53]

He knew us better than we knew ourselves. And he always, as I said this before, when he addressed us, he addressed our true nature. He didn't address our superficialities, but he got right to the point of who we were in such a casual way. He was pretty casual. very casual. But he was always on. So, you know, a Zen teacher's life is continuous practice. But it's continuous practice in a relaxed way. Nothing forced. So people really responded to him and loved him. because of who he was and the way he responded and acted toward his students. He didn't say, this is a good student and this is a bad student.

[13:56]

He didn't judge us in that way. Students that had the hardest time are the ones that he loved the most, but he didn't love anybody better than anybody else. He said, I don't love anybody especially. Of course. He didn't have any so-called favorites, even though he favored some people. So he always emphasized having a... When he talked about... warmth, warm practice. What he meant was flexibility and soft mind.

[15:00]

Soft mind is the mind that is open to everything and knows how to blend with things and knows how to move with things. It's like A tall tree is more easily blown over by the wind than a blade of grass. Grass, when it's blown by the wind, bends over very easily. But a big tree can be knocked over by a strong wind. I wrote a little poem once about water, and water always seeks the lowest place. It always goes to the lowest place, and that's its strength, because it has no backbone.

[16:05]

It can go anywhere and take any shade. That's a Zen student's flexibility. Wherever you go, you take the shape of wherever you are. This is the secret of Zazen. The secret of Zazen is to take any shape. Even though you're sitting in one particular place, you're sitting in a posture that is the most confined, restricted posture. There may be other postures that are equal to that, but... You take a restricted posture and don't move. And yet you have your total freedom. And you have your total freedom because you take the shape of whatever is happening in your body. You don't resist. You have this, that's what he was talking about.

[17:10]

Soft mind means you don't resist. You follow the contours. I was going to talk a little bit about Zazen tonight, but I thought, well, you know, we always talk about Zazen. So what's new? But actually, Zazen is always new. You never sat before. Every time you sit Zazen, you never sat before. It's the first time. No matter how many times you've done this, it's the first time. You bow nine times in the morning, and it's the first time you've ever done it. That's our attitude for fresh mind, for freshness. How do you keep your practice fresh when you do the same thing over and over again every day? Because you realize every time you do something, you've never done it before.

[18:16]

That's how we find our practice. Living each moment thoroughly and completely. So flexibility is very important in your health. for a healthy mind and for a healthy body. And soft mind. It allows you to blend. You know, when you're working in the kitchen, you have six or seven people at a time in this kitchen walking around with unsheathed knives, hot pots, and little aisles. They're passing each other constantly, turning around with all these implements, and to be aware of where everybody is and what everybody's doing as well as what you are doing.

[19:27]

That takes a lot of concentration. I hate to say it, mindfulness, because it becomes such a trite term, but mindfulness. and awareness. Work is one of the important parts of our practice, as we all know, because in the summertime in Tassajara, that's what we do. We work all day long. And when you first come to Tassajara, if your introduction to Tassajara is summertime and work, you may get easily discouraged. Because you say, well, where's the Zen? I thought I was coming to Zen, practice Zen. And here, I'm just working all day long, making bed, some rich person's bed. This is our gift to the public. It really is.

[20:28]

Toss the heart in the summertime is our gift to the public. And in turn, we are supported by the public. We are supported by the people that we're taking care of. So it's a wonderful exchange, but I have to say it's hard. And in July, I used to give my, I guess you'd call it a retreat in July. And then last time I said I wanted to give my retreat at the end rather than in the middle of the summer because it gets so hot. And so I appreciate how difficult it is when all you want to do is kind of sit down and you have to go to work. So I applaud all of the people for whom this is their introduction to practice.

[21:32]

But work is always an integral part of practice. Zazen, work, study. I'm coming around to what my talk was going to be about. This is the introduction to my talk. I didn't want to just start talking about it because it's so trite. Zazen, oh, Dokusan, or practice instruction. Seeing the teacher. If you don't have a teacher, it's okay. But there are teachers in Kasahara. And you should be seeing a teacher. And discuss your practice with somebody, especially if you're new. You should be discussing your practice with somebody all the time, a lot. And that helps to bring out what we're...

[22:37]

inform you what actually is happening here and what is happening with you as a student. I mentioned the work and then there's study. These are four offerings that we give and four aspects of practice. Zazen, interview or discussion with a teacher, work and study. I always enjoyed study because study inspires us to practice and keeps us focused on practice. There's so many things to think about. So many things to think about. So when you're here, what we should be thinking about, especially we're in the mountains, we're away from the city.

[23:41]

We're away from all the things that people think about all the time. So to put our mind to thinking about what we're doing here. And so when we study the history and the koans, the koans are public cases that... are examples of the practice of the ancestors and a vital aspect of their practice is encapsulated in these short, pithy presentations. So we should be studying the koans because they really focus us on what practice is and the history as well. It's hard to stay focused always on what we're doing. And then we say, what's this about? Why did I get here? Why did I come to Tassajara?

[24:44]

All I do is make me work. But you don't have a lot of time to study. We socialize. You get a lot of people together and we want to socialize. If this was strictly... Hardly strictly hard-nosed monastery socialization would not be very much part of it. The practice would be different. But that's what we do in the wintertime and in the spring. So the summer is not the same as the winter and the spring. where we actually sit and sound a lot, and we study, and we work, and we don't fool around much, too much.

[25:47]

I'm making a sound that more than it is, but... So this, to me, this is, for new people, just an introduction and an offering, and if you really like it, to find a way to come in the practice period times. Zazen, interaction, interview with a senior person, work practice and study. And work practice, has its balance. All those four are balanced. Here it's a little unbalanced because there's so much work. But it's a great opportunity. So it's customary for us to do this for 50 minutes.

[26:58]

Let me try it. And it's 9.15, is that right? So I want to close by saying goodnight. You can see I'm a bit rocky. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[27:51]

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